Natasha. The crying sound came from Natasha. What was she doing here…?
“Dammit, I think I must’ve hit my head on the windshield,” Dwayne said.
Mia wanted to back away, to run, but Natasha was belted into the front seat. Mia couldn’t simply just leave her there. But maybe Dwayne had hit his head hard enough to make him groggy…. Maybe he wouldn’t notice if…
Mia quickly went around to the other side of the car. Tasha already had her seat belt unfastened and was up and in Mia’s arms as soon as the door was opened.
“Are you okay?” she asked, smoothing back Tasha’s hair from her face.
The little girl nodded, eyes wide. “Dwayne hit Thomas,” she told Mia, tears still streaming down her face. “He fell down and was all bloody. Dwayne made him dead.”
Thomas…? Dead? No…
“I screamed and screamed for Thomas to help me—” Tasha hiccuped “—but he wouldn’t get up and Frisco couldn’t hear me and Dwayne took me in his car.”
Thomas was unconscious maybe, but not dead. Please God, not dead. Not Thomas King….
Moving quickly, Mia carried Natasha around the car and up the embankment, praying Dwayne was too dizzy to notice, hoping that if she didn’t turn around to check, he wouldn’t—
“Where you going in such a hurry, darlin’?” Dwayne drawled.
Mia froze. And turned around. And found herself staring down the muzzle of a very big, very deadly-looking gun.
Dwayne held a handkerchief to his forehead, but his gun hand was decidedly steady as he hefted his bulk out of the car.
“I think we’ll take your car,” he told her with a gap-toothed smile. “In fact, you can drive.”
Frisco knew something was wrong. The woods were too quiet. There was no echo of laughter or voices from the lake. And he’d never known Tasha to be silent for long.
The footpath down to the water wasn’t easy to navigate on crutches, but he moved as quickly as he could. And as he neared the clearing—out of force of habit—he drew his sidearm from his shoulder holster. He moved as silently as he could, ready to drop his right crutch should the need arise to use it.
He saw Thomas, crumpled on the beach, blood on his face.
There was no sign of Tasha—or anyone else. But there were fresh tire tracks at the boat drop. Whoever had been here had gone.
And taken Tasha with them.
Frisco holstered his weapon as he moved quickly toward Thomas.
The kid stirred as Frisco touched him, searching for a pulse. He was alive, thank God. His nose was bleeding and he had a nasty-looking gash on the back of his head. “Tasha,” he gasped. “The fat man took Tash.”
The fat man.
Dwayne Bell.
Took Tasha.
Frisco had been at the cabin, wrestling with his demons while Dwayne had been down here kicking the living daylights out of Thomas and kidnapping Tash. Guilt flooded him, but he instantly pushed it aside. He’d have time to feel guilty later. Right now he had to move fast, to get Tasha back.
“How long ago?” Frisco tore a piece of fabric from his shirttail and used it to apply pressure to the back of Thomas’s head as he helped the kid sit up.
“I don’t know. He hit me hard and I went down.” Thomas let out a stream of foul language that would’ve made a SEAL take notice. “I tried to fight it—I heard Tasha screaming for me, but I blacked out. Dammit. Dammit!” There were tears in his eyes. “Lieutenant, she’s scared to death of this guy. We gotta find her and get her back.”
Frisco nodded, watching as Thomas forced away his dizziness and crawled to the lake to splash water onto his face, washing away the blood. The kid probably had a broken nose, but he didn’t so much as say ouch. “Can you walk, or should I get your car and bring it around?”
Thomas straightened up, wobbling only slightly. “I can walk.” He felt his pockets and swore again. “The fat man took my car keys.”
Frisco started up the path that led back to the cabin. “So we’ll hot-wire it.” He looked back. “Tell me if I’m going too fast for you.” Now that was a switch, wasn’t it?
“You know how to hot-wire a car?”
“It’s something we’re taught in the SEAL teams.”
“Shoot,” Thomas said. “I could be a SEAL.”
Frisco looked back at him and nodded. “Yeah, you could.”
16
“I need your help.”
Frisco looked out the open car window, up at Lt. Joe Catalanotto, the Commanding Officer of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad. Cat looked like he was ready to ship out on some high-level security training mission. He was dressed in fatigues and a black combat vest and wore his long dark hair back in a ponytail.
“Right now?” Cat asked, bending slightly to look inside the car, his sharp gaze taking in Thomas’s battered appearance and bloody T-shirt.
“Yeah,” Frisco said. “My sister’s kid’s been snatched. Sharon got herself in too deep with a drug dealer. He’s the one that took the kid. I need help finding him and getting her back.”
Joe Cat nodded. “How many guys you need?”
“How many you got?”
Frisco’s former CO smiled. “How’s all seven of Alpha Squad?”
Seven. Those seven were the six guys Frisco had served with—along with his own replacement. That was one man he wasn’t looking forward to working with. But he nodded anyway. Right now he needed all the help he could get to find Natasha. “Good.”
As Frisco watched, Cat slipped a microthin cellular phone from the pocket of his vest and dialed a coded number.
“Yeah, Catalanotto,” he said. “Cancel Alpha Squad’s flight out. Our training mission has been delayed—” he glanced up at the cloudless blue sky “—due to severe weather conditions. Unless otherwise directed, we’ll be off base as of 1600 hours, executing local reconnaissance and surveillance training.” He snapped the phone shut and turned back to Frisco. “Let’s pay a visit to the equipment room, get the gear we need to find this guy.”
“Whoa, Frisco, nice couch!”
With the exception of the glaringly pink couch, Frisco’s apartment was starting to look like command central.
Lucky had finished cleaning the place up and had moved the sofa in yesterday. Now, under Joe Cat’s command, Bobby and Wes—Bob, tall and built like a truck; Wes, short and razor thin, but inseparable since BUD/S training had made them swim buddies—had moved aside all unessential furniture and set the small dining room table in the center of the living room.
“You’ve gotta do the rest of the room in pink, too—it suits you, baby!” Six and a half feet tall, black and built like a linebacker, Chief Daryl Becker—nicknamed Harvard—possessed an ivy league education and a wicked sense of humor. He carried a heavy armload of surveillance gear, which he began to set up on the table.
Blue McCoy was the next to arrive. The blond-haired SEAL brought several large cases that made the muscles in his arms stand out in high relief. Assault weapons—God forbid they’d need to use them. Even the normally taciturn executive officer and second in command of Alpha Squad couldn’t resist commenting on the pink couch.
“I’m dying to meet this new girlfriend of yours,” Blue said in his soft Southern drawl. “Please tell me that sofa there belongs to her.”
Mia.
Where the hell was she? She should have been back long before him.
But her apartment was still locked up tight. Frisco had gone out to check at least five times since he’d arrived. He’d even left a message on her answering machine, thinking she might phone in. He hadn’t apologized—he’d need to do that in person. He’d simply told her that he was looking for her. Please call him.
“Okay,” Harvard said, finishing hooking the computers and other equipment to Frisco’s phone line. “We’re all set. When this Dwayne calls, you keep him talking and we’ll pinpoint his location in about forty seconds.”
“When Dwayne calls. If Dwayne calls.” Frisco couldn’t keep his frustration
from buzzing in his voice. “Dammit, I hate waiting.”
“Gee, I forgot how much fun it was to work with the King of Impatience,” Lucky said, coming in the door. Another man followed him. It was Ensign Harlan Jones, aka Cowboy—the hotheaded young SEAL who’d replaced Frisco in the Alpha Squad. He nodded a silent greeting to Frisco, no doubt subdued both by the seriousness of a kidnapped child and the strangeness of being in the home of the man whose place he’d taken for his own.
“Thanks for coming,” Frisco said to him.
“Glad to be able to help,” Cowboy replied.
Frisco’s condo had never seemed so small. With eight large men and Thomas there, there was barely room to move. But it was good. It was like old times. Frisco had missed these guys, he realized. He just wished Natasha hadn’t had to be kidnapped to bring them all together again.
And that had entirely been up to him. He’d been the one keeping his distance, pushing the squad away. Yeah, the fact that he wasn’t one of them anymore stuck in his throat. Yeah, it made him jealous as hell. But this was better than nothing. It was better than quitting….
“You got anything to eat?” Wes asked, heading for the kitchen.
“Hey, Frisco, mind if I crash on your bed?” Bobby asked, also not waiting for an answer before he headed down the hall.
“Who hit you in the face with a baseball bat?” Lucky asked Thomas, who’d remained silent and off to one side until now.
The kid was leaning back against the wall and he looked as if he should be sitting if not lying down. “Dwayne,” he answered. “And it was the barrel of his gun, not a baseball bat.”
“Maybe you should go home,” Lucky suggested. “Take care of that—”
Thomas turned to give the other man a cool, appraising look. “Nope. I’m here until we get the little girl back.”
“I think Alpha Squad…”
“I’m not leaving.”
“…can probably handle—”
Frisco cut in. “The kid stays,” he said quietly.
Blue stepped forward. “Your name’s Thomas, right?” he said to the boy.
“Thomas King.”
Blue held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he drawled. The two shook. “If you’re going to be helping us, why don’t I show you how some of this equipment works?”
Frisco sat down on the pink sofa next to Joe Cat as Blue and Harvard began giving Thomas a crash course in tracing phone calls. “I can’t just sit here waiting,” he said. “I’ve got to do something.”
Wes came back out of the kitchen, having overheard Frisco’s remark. “Why don’t you make yourself a nice cup of hot tea,” he teased in a lispingly sweet voice, “and curl up on your nice pink couch with your favorite copy of Sense and Sensibility to distract you?”
“Hey,” Harvard boomed in his deep, subbass voice. “I heard that. I like Jane Austen.”
“I do, too,” Cowboy interjected.
“Whoa,” Lucky said. “Who taught you to read?”
The room erupted in laughter, and Frisco restlessly stood up, pushing his way out the door and onto the landing. He knew that humor was the way the men of Alpha Squad dealt with stress and a tense situation, but he didn’t feel much like laughing.
He just wanted Natasha back.
Where was she right now? Was she scared? Had Dwayne hit her again? Dammit, if that bastard as much as touched that little girl…
Frisco heard the screen door open behind him and turned to see that Joe Cat had followed him.
“I want to go talk to my sister again,” Frisco told the CO. “I think there’s more to this than she’s told me.”
Cat didn’t hesitate. “I’ll drive you over. Just let me tell the guys where we’re going.” He stepped back into Frisco’s condo, then came back out, nodding to Frisco. “Let’s go.”
As they headed down to the parking lot, Frisco glanced back one last time at Mia’s lifeless condo. Where was she?
Mia carried Tasha across the well-manicured lawn to the front door of the big Spanish-style house.
This was ludicrous. It was broad daylight, they were in the middle of a seemingly affluent, upper-middle-class suburb. Down the street, several landscapers cleaned up a neighbor’s yard. Should she scream for help, or try to run?
She did neither, well aware of that very large gun Dwayne Bell carried concealed in his pocket. If she had been alone, she might have risked it. But not with Natasha in her arms. Still, it gave her a chill to know that she could clearly identify the address where they’d been brought, and the man who’d brought them here.
“Shouldn’t you have blindfolded us?” she asked as Dwayne opened the door.
“Can’t drive if you’re blindfolded. Besides, you’re here as my guests. There’s no need to make this more unpleasant than it has to be.”
“You have a curious definition of the word guest, Mr. Bell,” Mia said as Dwayne shut the door behind her. The inside of the house was dark with all the shades pulled down, and cool from an air conditioner set well below seventy degrees. She could hear canned laughter from a television somewhere in the big house. Tasha’s arms tightened around her neck. “I’ve never held someone at gunpoint simply to invite them into my home. I think hostage is a more appropriate term.”
“Actually, I prefer the word collateral,” the overweight man told her.
A man appeared, walking toward them down the hall from a room that might’ve been a kitchen. His jacket was off and he wore a gun in a shoulder holster very similar to Frisco’s. He spoke to Dwayne in a low voice, glancing curiously at Mia and Natasha.
“Have Ramon take care of it,” Dwayne said, loudly enough for Mia to overhear. “And then I want to talk to you both.”
There were at least two other men in the house—at least two of them carrying weapons. Mia looked around as Dwayne led them up the thickly carpeted stairs, trying to memorize the layout of the house, determined to gather any information that would be valuable for Frisco when he came.
Frisco would find them. Mia knew that as surely as she knew that the late-afternoon sun would soon slip beneath the horizon.
And then he would come.
“The stakes are higher than I thought,” Frisco said tightly, coming out into the drug-and-alcohol rehab center’s waiting room. Joe Catalanotto rose to his feet. “Sharon didn’t steal five thousand from Bell—she stole fifty thousand. She fudged his bookkeeping—didn’t think he’d notice.”
He headed for the door, toward the parking lot and Joe Cat’s jeep.
“Can she pay it back?” Cat asked.
Frisco snorted. “Are you kidding? It’s long gone. She used most of it to pay off some gambling debts and blew the rest on drugs and booze.” He stopped, turning to Cat. “Let me borrow your phone. Sharon gave me the address where she used to live with Bell,” he told Cat as he dialed the number of the cellular phone link they’d set up back at his apartment.
The line was picked up on the first ring.
“Becker here.” It was Harvard.
“It’s just me, Chief,” Frisco said. “Any calls?”
“Nothing yet. You know we would have relayed it directly to you if there were.”
“I’ve got an address I want to check out. It’s just outside of San Felipe, in Harper, the next town over to the east. Have Lucky and Blue meet me and Cat over there, all right?” He gave Harvard the street address.
“I’ve got that location on my computer,” Harvard told him. “They’re on their way, soon as I print them out a map. You need directions?”
Cat was listening in. “Tell H. to send a copy of that map to the fax in my jeep.”
Frisco stared at Joe Cat. “You have a fax machine in your jeep?”
Cat smiled. “CO privileges.”
Frisco ended the call and handed the phone back to Cat. But Cat shook his head. “You better hold on to it. If that ransom call comes in…”
Frisco met his friend’s eyes. “If that ransom call comes in, we better be able to tra
ce it,” he said grimly.
“And pray that we’re not already too late. Sharon told me Dwayne Bell has killed in revenge for far less than fifty thousand dollars.”
“No one’s home,” Lucky reported as he and Blue McCoy silently materialized alongside Cat’s jeep, down the street from the house Sharon had lived in with Dwayne Bell.
“I went through a basement window,” Blue told Frisco and Joe Cat. “From what I could see from just a quick look around, Dwayne Bell doesn’t live there anymore. There were kids’ toys all over the place, and there was mail on the kitchen counter addressed to Fred and Charlene Ford. Looks like Bell moved out and these other folks moved in.”
Frisco nodded, trying not to clench his teeth. It would’ve been too easy if Bell had been there. He’d known that coming out here was a long shot to start with.
Cat was looking at him. “What do you want to do?”
Frisco shook his head. Nothing. There was nothing they could do now but wait. “I want the phone to ring.”
“He’ll call and we will get Natasha back,” Lucky said with far more confidence than Frisco felt.
Mia tried the window of the tiny bedroom where she and Tasha were being held. It was sealed shut. They wouldn’t get out that way, short of breaking the glass. And even if they could break it without Dwayne and his goons hearing them, there was a long drop down to the ground.
Tasha sat on the bed, knees hugged tightly to her chest, her blue eyes wide as Mia made her way around the room.
The closet was minuscule—there was no way out there.
There were no secret doors, no hidden passages, no air ducts in the walls or crawl spaces underneath the throw rug. There was no hidden telephone with which she could make a furtive call for help, no gun in the dresser drawer that she could use to defend them.
The door was locked with a bolt on the outside.
They weren’t going anywhere until Dwayne or his goons unlocked it.
There was nothing to do now but wait.
The phone rang.
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